


Iris

by 7veilsphaedra



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-24 07:01:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7veilsphaedra/pseuds/7veilsphaedra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A misunderstanding caused by the infamous Bridge Scene in Reload creates a rift between Hakkai and Gojyo that takes the intervention of friends to work out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iris

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally published at the Dreamwidth Saiyuki giftfic exchange community valentine-smut in 2011, but was later revised.

Intense colour winked in the tiny space between the window over the sink and the cupboard. A framed photo was hanging there where it could be seen several times every day. The picture was of two figures on a bridge, the sky above them a brilliant blue with white scudding across it, wind whipping the men’s hair behind them, heightening the blood in their cheeks and piling the clouds into cumulonimbus towers. The creamy white mat and glossy yellow wooden frame around the print had been chosen with care, hues plucked from the reflection of sunshine off surfaces in the photo.  
  
Hakkai moistened a paper-towel and ran it across the top edge of the frame. He polished the glass carefully. There wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. There never was.  
  
The photo had been taken by Goku during a rest break on the road trip west. A camera salesman had set up a stall in the marketplace, one papered with pictures he’d snapped of all his customers, their faces smiling. Goku had pestered Sanzo into buying him a disposable instamatic the moment he saw all those happy faces. He probably believed the soft-sell that people could be made happy simply by having their pictures taken. Even after he had the camera, Goku could seldom stop fidgeting enough to focus anything on film, and it was a miracle that this shot hadn’t blurred like all the others.  
  
Memories of that day included air so hot and close with scorched dust, it was primed for late afternoon thunder and lightning. It carried the smells of pork roasting over charcoal fires, river mud and algae, the pungent tang of poplar leaves and caramelized lychees. Back then, the laughter and chatter of many voices had surrounded them. The low of animals ready for auction drifted over from the marketplace. Gulls had keened over them. It was all in stark contrast to the ghostly quiet of the present, which had prevailed from the moment Hakkai had gotten up except for moments when wind spattered raindrops across the roof and tossed the forest’s evergreens. Occasionally, on that past distant day, a sortie of wind would also whistle and cause the marquees and pennants to flap and leaves to rustle, but it was hot and billowy like a plump quilt just out of a dryer, not biting and begrudging. It was not a day that had felt sorry for itself, but it was the one when Gojyo had asked him, “Why am I in your future?”  
  
In Hakkai’s daydream of a future, the one he’d just recited to Gojyo, he had a coffee shop, a capable wife and they had to keep chasing their daughters away from their irresistible ‘uncle’. Gojyo’s reaction to his fantasy scenario still stung. The photo was placed there to caution Hakkai against presumption, no matter how much he thought he knew about a fellow.  
  
Now and then, Hakkai would run into Goku and Sanzo together in town. Sometimes, he would invite them over for dinner; and sometimes, they would accept, but his last view of Gojyo was the day the guy had nonchalantly thrown his knapsack over his shoulder and walked away, whistling, one hand shoved into his jeans pocket, the other raised in a last wave. Hakkai had watched the final flash of blue and burgundy turn a corner and vanish. He remembered how the shade of faded denim in Gojyo’s jacket had not matched his jeans, and that the patch on his elbow was getting thin. He remembered that his headband was brand new and that his boots needed a silicone rub. With a sharp pang, Hakkai wondered if — now that he wasn’t taking care of those things anymore — Gojyo would even notice, or if the shabby and threadbare bits of his apparel would just keep on being shabby and threadbare until they fell apart. And, just like that, Hakkai had ceased to exist.  
  
Sanzo and Goku had invited themselves to a hotpot party at Hakkai’s house over the phone earlier in the week. Surprisingly, it turned out that Sanzo was no slouch with technology, and didn’t even need to be egged on by Goku to stay equipped with the latest gadgets. At Sanzo’s prodding, Hakkai had also bought a brand new cellphone package, which was how they had gotten in touch with him. It was so seldom that anyone called, however, he always had to think twice about what that weird ringtone was and who was supposed to be answering it. Sanzo was going to take Goku to the market to shop for the ingredients from a list Hakkai had texted over, a challenge for the impatient monk, who had grown a lot less impatient now that the Minus Wave had been quelled. They were bringing the food over so Hakkai could teach Goku how to cook. It felt like old times, except for the huge Gojyo-shaped hole in their quartet.  
  
Quintet, Hakkai readjusted his thoughts. Hakuryuu had also been part of their circle, although he lost the ability to transform into a jeep after the Minus Wave was gone.  
  
Hakkai sighed. The mats needed to be taken outside and shaken. The comforter on his double bed needed to be aired. The irises in the garden needed deadheading. There were plenty of other things to think about besides Gojyo.  
  
  
  
“Did you interview for that teaching post over in the next village?” Without invitation, Sanzo pulled a bottle of sake from Hakkai’s stores and poured his own.  
  
“No.” Hakkai smiled, ignoring the transgression, but filling tea bowls with steaming green liquid all the same. “And I believed I had put that subject to rest once and for all. I don’t care to be asked about it any further.”  
  
“So—what? You’re going to putz around all day, scrounging odd jobs from funeral directors and garbage collectors?”  
  
“I expect so.” Hakkai’s grin grew wider and gleamier.  
  
He had taught for a year after they came back: middle school physics, chemistry and mathematics. The advantage his demonic senses gave him was the ability to hear every nasty whisper, smell every contraband item and notice each telltale sleight-of-hand. Without as much as a glance away from the blackboard, he could toss a piece of chalk over his shoulder with enough force to leave a bindi-shaped bruise in the middle of some brat’s forehead. They must’ve sensed that if it came down to it, he had the power and ability to lobotomize them with those itty bitty pieces of chalk, because all eyes were riveted on him after that.  
  
It was the last parent-teacher meeting when Hakkai decided he’d had enough. Someone’s mother asked him why her kid still hadn’t been ‘fixed’ — her choice of words.  
  
 _“He won’t do his homework. What’s the matter with you?”_  
  
 _“I am a teacher, not a veterinarian. I do not ‘fix’ students.”_  
  
 _“If he doesn’t want to do his homework, then you’re obviously teaching him wrong.”_  
  
Hakkai couldn’t remember what he had said to her. Something ironic, probably, a lost cause in any case. She even seemed to have drawn the mistaken conclusion that Hakkai’s smiles were friendly and well-meaning.  
  
Sanzo ignored the bowl of tea Hakkai placed beside him.  
  
“Don’tcha wanna teach anymore, Hakkai?” Goku got right in between them, cutting off whatever it was that crackled before it turned into a feedback loop. “I thought you were pretty good at it. At least I always got what you were trying to teach me.”  
  
“Thank you for your concern, Goku, but it no longer interests me, except for friends. People change.”  
  
Sanzo snorted.  
  
Hakkai took a sip of scalding tea and didn’t flinch. “Anything I do for work now is simple and straightforward. I drive taxis, run ramen stalls, deliver mail … .”  
  
“Awesome!” As the priest turned his head away in contempt, Goku took advantage, nimbly swooping up the sake and draining it in one swallow. After he replaced the liquid with tea, he moved back to the other side of the table where Sanzo couldn’t reach him. “I really like my job delivering flyers. I meet all kinds of people on my rounds, and I get to pet all kinds of dogs. There are some really nice dogs in this place, don’t you think? Sanzo doesn’t mind me delivering flyers, do you?”  
  
“I see. So it isn’t that you object to the job, Sanzo.”  
  
“It’s fine for the monkey.” The priest grumped. “For you, it’s avoidance.”  
  
“I didn’t know you cared.”  
  
“I don’t. The Sanbatsushin saddled me with this. It’s my job, remember?”  
  
“Dear me, how could I have forgotten?” Hakkai felt like he’d rather knock back some liquor himself. Instead he rose to his feet. “Let me show you how to prepare the vegetables, Goku.”  
  
As he demonstrated how to peel water chestnuts, Hakkai assumed that his dinner companions were in touch with Gojyo and knew whether he was happy, healthy and prosperous. Hakkai had never progressed to the point of asking. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. It just seemed like one of those subjects from which he felt inexplicably banned, where the awkwardness of asking outweighed the relief of knowing. Besides, no matter what the answer, it was sure to cause more pain and yearning. So Hakkai sliced onion rings instead.  
  
“He’s been really grumpy lately.” Goku muttered in a low voice. “It’s this latest series of problems with the outreach program at the Temple. He’s been pulling a lot of late nights.”  
  
“What sort of problems?”  
  
In between peeling carrots and washing rice, Goku listed off a series of complaints. By the time their meal was ready, Hakkai was struck by how strong Goku’s memory had become.  
  
“Of course, it would be a piece of cake if you and Ero-kappa were still a—” Goku’s voice broke off when he caught sight of Sanzo standing in the doorway, glowering.  
  
“So noisy!” Sanzo growled. Abruptly, to Hakkai, he snapped, “Do you have a piece of paper and a pencil?”  
  
“There is a post-it block in the basket on the telephone table.” Hakkai pointed. “There should be some pens in the cup next to it.”  
  
“I need the bastard’s phone number. Do you have it?” Sanzo stared at Goku.  
  
“Whose? Oh.” Goku shot a guilty look over at Hakkai which immediately told him that they were referring to Gojyo. As Goku fished out his cellphone, punched in a code and recited some numbers, Sanzo scrawled angrily onto the vividly coloured pad of notepaper. Rather than listen and memorize, Hakkai concentrated with even more care than usual on creating the perfect carrot flowerets.  
  
Outside, a break in the clouds brought a spell of evening sunshine which bathed everything in gold. Hakkai looked out the window just as a double rainbow shimmered into existence.  
  
While Sanzo tramped back and forth across the porch, yelling and cursing into his cellphone, Hakkai and Goku cooked their hotpot together and talked about Goku’s plans. It took Hakkai’s breath away how easily he had sloughed off the past. With the return of his memories, Goku understood — with a clarity and depth that nobody else who Hakkai knew had shown — that no matter what happened, everything was going to be okay.  
  
Meanwhile, on the porch, Sanzo was working himself into a full-scale lather. Hakkai was amazed at the redness of his face and the inventiveness of his insults. “Dickhead! Asswipe! Jesus Christ, you sonuvabitch! You make me ashamed to be in the same species as you. What the fuck are you? Some goddamned bonobo?”  
  
“Oh my, ha ha ha!” Hakkai put down the worm of agar he had been about to stew, and rose to his feet from the chabudai. “Perhaps I had better call him in before the neighbours decide to summon the police.”  
  
Goku’s hand snaked out and stopped him. “Leave him. It’ll just remind him that you two aren’t speaking to each other anymore. He’ll redirect all that frustration at you.”  
  
Hakkai was stricken.  
  
“I see.” He got ready to sit down, and then decided he really couldn’t face the evening without a shot or two of something stiff. The sake was set on the table, and Sanzo handled Hakkai’s neighbour-worries by hurling his cellphone in a fit against a lamp-post where it shattered into particles.  
  
When he marched in and demanded to use Goku’s, Goku simply shrugged and said his batteries had run out. Hakkai said he had to bring his in for repair earlier that afternoon.  
  
Sanzo distracted himself with food, and though Hakkai’s anguish stung pretty much constantly in the background for the rest of the evening, at least with sake, it wore a fuzzy blanket of numb.  
  
  
  
It wasn’t premeditated.  
  
At first Hakkai tried to fix Sanzo’s phone, but that was a cobb salad of fractured plastic. So he rubbed a soft pencil, instead, over the block of post-its that Sanzo had forgotten to replace. A series of numbers showed up in stark relief against the graphite rubbing. Hakkai punched them into his cellphone.  
  
“Hello,” the familiar voice answered — too familiar for a voice which hadn’t spoken to Hakkai in years. He heard it every night in his sleep and every day in his thoughts.  
  
He had no idea, however, what to say in response. He just stood, listening, knowing that the other person waited for him silently on the other end, feeling a strange sense of communion. While they waited, Hakkai’s heartbeat threatened to overwhelm him.  
  
He could hear the vague clink of glasses and sounds of laughing and cheering over the line. The other end of the line had been answered in a bar. Hakkai let out a long sigh.  
  
“Hakkai?” The voice asked as he pulled away and disconnected the call. What an idiot he was, gawping over the phone like someone unsavoury, a stalker, an obscene caller. He shot out of his chair and went over to the sink where he splashed water across his face. The freshness was like a wake-up call.  
  
Three phone calls followed in quick succession, which he did not answer. Instead, he sat back in his chair staring at the kitchen clock, wondering what he should do with himself.  
  
It was either very late at night or early in the morning when someone started banging on his door. The thumps were so loud, it seemed as though the door was going to burst off its hinges. Shocked out of his funk by the noise, Hakkai got up and opened it.  
  
After all those years, he came face-to-face with Gojyo.  
  
Blood rushed into his face, pounded in his ears. All of Hakkai’s deadened senses rekindled: the wine-coloured hair; the smell of fresh rain-cleansed night; an incredible sweetness in all things. What a fine thing it was to be alive!  
  
Gojyo pushed his way in past Hakkai, taking no chances that he might decide to shut the door in his face. He kept his eyes trained on Hakkai, his face grim and resolute.  
  
Hakkai still didn’t know what to say. He kept waiting for Gojyo to ask him what he had wanted earlier — why had he called? Yet Gojyo wouldn’t speak. Instead, he circled around Hakkai’s kitchen, staring at him the whole time. He looked so good, his shoulders as broad and strong and protective as they had ever been, the shape of his muscles like waves under his clothes, his hair … shorter, curling a ways under his jaw, but longer than it had been when Gonou was hauled away. When he finally stopped circling Hakkai, it was next to the sink where the framed photo had caught his eye. Hakkai saw that he recognized the scene and remembered the incident. He shook with silent, mirthless laughter.  
  
Then Gojyo reached for Hakkai, yanked him close and wound his arms around him, threading fingers through the hair on the back of his head.  
  
Everything fell into place; everything made perfect sense when, suddenly, Hakkai realized he was being kissed. It started tenderly, moist and sweet and slow, and upon meeting no resistance, steadily grew in passion and power. Hakkai responded almost in spite of himself. His heart leapt when he realized this was Gojyo who kissed him, Gojyo whose absence had given rise to all kinds of strange and hurtful speculations, Gojyo whose strong arms were now wrapped around him turning all those speculations into delusional lies, Gojyo whose tongue was suckling against Hakkai’s as though he was the source of life. As his body turned into water, Hakkai tried to communicate with the sweeps and curls of his own tongue, how dearly he wanted — no, craved this.  
  
There was a moment when they pulled apart, to recover their breath. As he gazed at Gojyo, speechless and immobilized by the clamour of his heartbeat, the rest of the room seemed to darken, as though his pupils were the irises on a camera lens, zooming in, focusing. Hakkai knew there wasn’t a shred of stoicism left in him — nothing false in which to veil or muffle his feelings. He saw them reflected in Gojyo’s face, whose muscles twitched under their force.  
  
Hakkai’s fingers, hyper-sensitized and thrumming like an electrical wire, traced the length of Gojyo’s face, stroked his cheeks, soothing away the tics and tiny lines which had appeared since they parted. He hated the stresses and worries that caused these lines, inwardly raged against them for daring to attack when he couldn’t be there to fight them off. Then he reached back in and continued to kiss, starving from years of want.  
  
Somehow, without breaking apart, they wheeled around to the couch, toppled over and lay there, trying to hot-glue as much of their skin together as they could unwrap.  
  
There were some fumbling attempts to remove clothing, made more awkward by the fact that neither of them wanted to break off their kisses long enough to undress. Hakkai had lost his trousers and one leg of his underpants for the simple reason that he hadn’t been wearing boots when this all started, unlike Gojyo, whose skin-tight jeans only managed to make it down as far as his knees before the struggle threatened tumbles, breakages and injuries. But Hakkai’s finicky buttoned-down oxford was only unfastened as far down as his scar before they gave up, whereas Gojyo’s chest — his beautifully shaped chest, carved like a classical sculpture — and shoulders and the muscles all along his back were complete naked for exploration and, more importantly, for hanging on.  
  
Hakkai supposed they needed to talk. There were a few things they really needed to clear up — like where the lube and condoms had come from, and how it was Gojyo just happened to have them on hand, almost as though he’d been planning this— but he decided to postpone the chitchat to a time when Gojyo’s fingers weren’t wrapped around his dick or stuck up his ass. In truth, he didn’t exactly care. Not when those fingers were doing such extraordinary things to his chi, sending it shooting up his spine like a fountain with every stroke, or searing his heart like a sun-baked garter snake basking on some desert mesa.  
  
He couldn’t speak, even if he wanted to: the moment was too acute. Gojyo seemed to be incapacitated by the same speechlessness. Even when they took a moment to pause, to gaze, to anchor themselves to the moment, it wasn’t a thing which could be articulated with words.  
  
Then Gojyo was moving in him, or he was moving in Gojyo. It didn’t matter. At some point, one or the other or both of them eventually came. Even that didn’t matter. The only thing which mattered was that Gojyo was with Hakkai, that Gojyo wanted to be with Hakkai.  
  
When, at long last, Hakkai could force words through his throat, he asked, “What took you so long?”  
  
Defeated, Gojyo’s head dropped against his shoulder. Hakkai stroked his hair, absorbing the shudder of Gojyo’s body as he laughed bitterly. “You’re kidding, right?”  
  
As light as his heart felt, Hakkai was in a serious mood. “Why would I joke about something like that?”  
  
Gojyo’s fingers traced Hakkai’s face, just as his had been touched. They lingered over the shell of Hakkai’s ear, where the three polished ear-cuffs remained clipped. “Do you have any idea what it took for me to do this?”  
  
Hakkai’s face burned. He hadn’t fully appreciated the risk until that moment.  
  
“Never,” he whispered. “You will never be in peril from me.”  
  
“Yeah, I know. Hindsight’s a bitch. I’m kind of kicking the living shit out of myself right now.”  
  
Hakkai started to laugh. “I’d say leave some for me, but I just gave you my word I wouldn’t.”  
  
“Jerkwad!” Gojyo swept him back into his arms. “What about you? I thought you had some brains. Man, were they ever overrated.” He punctuated each insult with a hearty smacking kiss.  
  
“You’re only figuring that out now?” Hakkai continued laughing, but his self-loathing never spared him. Before long, he sobered up and said, “I should’ve gone after you years ago.”  
  
“No! You’ve always been impossible with this — I should’ve had more sense.”  
  
Hakkai shook his head.  
  
“Okay.” Gojyo tried a different tack. “If I told you we were both equally to blame, would you be willing to drop the kick-me party?”  
  
“That depends.”  
  
“On what?”  
  
“On your encore.”  
  
Gojyo reached over the side of the couch, rummaged blindly around his jean-jacket until his hand patted the shape of his cigarette pack. He pulled one out, but didn’t light it.  
  
“I own a bar.” He told Hakkai suddenly. “It wasn’t something I’d planned, actually — won the deed at a mahjong game. But I surprised myself when I took over. Turns out I’ve got a good head for running a respectable establishment: I’m a night owl; I can size up the customers pretty good, and know how to divert the troublemakers; and I’m not a big drinker when it’s my own liquor I’m selling.”  
  
Hakkai nodded. He was tucked up against Gojyo’s side, and had been entertaining the puzzle of how to move them over to the bedroom without releasing their clinch. Gojyo’s explanation was answering all kinds of questions he had.  
  
“Lately, I’ve been thinking—” Gojyo looked him in the eye, “How nice it would be to set part of the bar aside, open up an espresso counter. What do you think?”  
  
“That sounds right.” Hakkai knew what Gojyo was really asking him. “If you really want me to.”  
  
“Good.” Gojyo finally lit up his smoke. “It’s settled then.”  
  
—fin—


End file.
